Drama
"Friendship is friendship and a wonderful thing and I am all for it."
American Buffalo is the story of a friendship that implodes, as three no-hopers in a run-down junk shop plan a robbery that never happens.
Mamet's 1975 script is impossible to pin down, as the audience's perceptions of the situation and characters are constantly shifting.
Don, Teach and Bobby (Mark Grimmer, Mike Lesslie and Harry Lloyd) are both empathetic and repulsive - in the same breath they can plan an armed robbery and nag each other for missing breakfast.
They live grubby, undistinguished lives, where their only excitement comes from a game of cards, hemmed in by their own lack of imagination and talent.
In Ben White's production, the actors are hemmed in physically as well. The OFS stage is crammed with junk: overflowing cardboard boxes, seventies porn mags and a rusty metal instrument designed to do unpleasant things to pigs.
Grimmer, Lesslie and Lloyd turn in three storming performances - White describes his cast as "among the best on the Oxford stage," and he is probably right. Lloyd, in particular, displays impressive versatility in his portrayal of the simple-minded smack addict Bobby.
All angular teenage limbs and big, naïve eyes, he brings his role both an endearing vulnerability and a certain desparate obstinacy.
However, the impression I was left with was of three performances, not one, as if the actors' talents had not quite been fused into a cohesive whole.
That said, the quality of the acting is undoubtedly stupendous.
There are times in Oxford when you know that one day you'll see names in lights, and this is certainly one of them.
Kenneth Lonergan's This is Our Youth is the story of three flat-sharing middle-class youngsters trying to make their way in the big wide world without their parents or proper jobs.
Dennis (played by Angus Cameron) deals drugs and is happy to live in squalor, thinking he epitomises a "one-man youth culture". Warren (Ferdie Addis) struggles to define himself, trapped between the legacy of his murdered sister and his father's shady business empire. Jessica (Laura Palmer) is his neurotic new love interest.
As she puts it, they are both just "rich little pot-smoking burnt-out rebels," but they are an exploration of 1980s urban youth nevertheless.
They are forced to deal with deaths, drugs, and relationships at a time of life-limbo, but are never able to do so beyond the limits of their own experience. Warren's theft of cash from his father exemplifies his dependence on him, and yet he retains a deep scorn for the values which govern adult society at large.
The question from the start appears to be: will the evolving relationship of the three resolve their disaffection with society?
The three-strong cast do act well together, especially Palmer, who by virtue of her accent is the most readily identifiable stereotype.
But the director's decision to transpose the characters from their original setting of downtown New York to the council estates of North London is a strange one: a clumsy attempt to portray the universality of their predicament.
The script is heavily reliant on the specific microcosm of rough, urban New York and American teenage culture, and translates uneasily. The flow of the narrative works noticeably better when coming from Jessica, who remains American, than from the two boys, and the play is undoubtedly the less powerful for this ill thought out inconsistency.
Maybe this example demonstrates the perils of divorcing a play about society from its social and linguistic settings. Maybe the viewer will find themselves able to relate to it despite the loss of particularism. This reviewer couldn't.
One of the most traditional English images of summer is that of friends Ratty, Mole and Badger "messing about on the river" - never mind in a punt with Pimms and strawberries, colliding with a few college VIIIs on the Isis.
Trinity's interpretation of this gentle tale offers more than the cliché, however. Kenneth Grahame's classic children's story is laced through with social comment and satire, with Toad's pomposity at the upper end of society offset by the menacing band of underground bandits, the weasels, who take over Toad Hall whilst Toad is languishing in prison for stealing a motorcar.
The weasels deserve a special mention here, their perpetual pawing and sneering making for a sinister slant on the more serious issues at hand - the court-room scene is particularly well done, with Toad's catchphrase 'poop-poop' used to indicate both subversion and celebration.
Added to this, the animal features and mannerisms of the characters do well to convince in a play where human and animal kingdoms interact on an everyday basis - the costume department has done well.
A set modelled on the school room provides a modern backdrop to a classic tale, contrasting with Trinity's spectacular lawns, yet working well with the styling of the play as a children's tale with grown-up issues.
Toad (Tom Mendlesohn) is suitably egotistical yet self-pitying in turns, and Ratty (Aled Roberts) and Mole (Katie Lee) provide an excellent focus for the main action.
Witty, visually pleasing and appealing to all ages, The Wind in the Willows appears to be a production which promises to be one of the highlights of the lawns season.
This play, it has to be said, does not deliver an evening of light entertainment. It is a harrowing, grim and self-consciously sickening work. Watching it is a singularly unpleasant, yet deeply engaging experience; a feeling of gravel creeping under the skin.
Anthony Neilson's brief and genuinely shocking play deals with a troubled couple, Stuart (Tom Asquith) and Abby (Helen Prichard), whose intense bickering has led to a series of infidelities. Despite these, Abby has become pregnant with Steve's child, and much of the play consists of their expletive-peppered and torturous discussions over whether to keep the baby. At the same time, a parallel storyline is developing, in which the couple's relationship exists in purely monetary terms, as Abby demands cash from Steve in return for satisfying increasingly bizarre and perverse sexual fantasies.
As an audience, however, we are initially uncertain of which storyline precedes the other, whether the sexual and violent degeneracy is a flashback, or whether we are witnesses to the sick decline of a relationship. One supremely tragic event finally shatters this uncertainty, and from then on the play is unremittingly dark and bleak.
Katie-Ann Berk's staging captures brilliantly the time shifts necessitated by the narrative structure, making full use of lighting to articulate the change in tone between the two strands. The set, with leopard print rug and grubby sofa littered with trashy novels and magazines, as well as the more chilling debris of childhood, perfectly echoes the sordid world of internet pornography in which Steve immerses himself.
Prichard and Asquith both have a mammoth task with what are emotionally very demanding roles. For the most part their naturalism is thoroughly absorbing, despite the tendency of the script to resort periodically to prosaic, expletive laden banality. A shattering yet captivating experience.
27th May 2004